Andrew the Glad eBook

“I don’t think I do,” she answered,
and her lashes swept her cheeks as she lifted the
sketch-book to her knees. “Only suppose
I was to dream—­some of your—­other
work—­some day? I don’t want to
build your bridges—­but I might want to—­write
some of your poems. Hadn’t you better do
something to stop me right now?” The smile had
come to stay and peeped roguishly out at him from
beneath her lashes.

“No,” he answered calmly, “if you
want my dreams—­they are yours.”

“Oh,” she said as she rose to her feet
and looked down at him wistfully, “your beautiful,
beautiful dreams! Ever since that afternoon I
have gone over and over the lines you read me.
The one about the ’brotherhood of our heart’s
desires’ keeps me from being lonely. I think—­I
think I went to sleep saying it to myself last night
and—­”

It couldn’t go on any longer—­as Andrew
rose to his feet he gathered together any stray wreckage
of wits that was within his reach and managed, by
not looking directly at her, to say in a rational,
elderly, friendly tone, slightly tinged with the scientific:

“My dear child, and that’s why you built
my bridge for me to-day. You put yourself into
mental accord with me by the use of my jingle last
night and fell asleep having hypnotized yourself with
it. Things wilder than fancies are facts these
days, written in large volumes by extremely erudite
old gentlemen and we believe them because we must.
This is a simple case, with a well-known scientific
name and—­”

“But,” interrupted Caroline Darrah, and
as she stood away from him against the dim hills,
her slender figure seemed poised as if for flight,
and a hurt young seriousness was in her lifted purple
eyes: “I don’t want it to be a ‘simple
case’ with any scientific—­”
and just here a merry call interrupted her from up-stream.

Phoebe and Polly had come to summon her back to the
club; tea was on the brew. With the intensest
hospitality they invited Andrew to come, too.
But he declined with what grace he could and made his
way through the tangle down-stream as they walked
back under the beeches.

Thus a very bitter thing had come to Andrew Sevier—­and
sweet as the pulse of heaven. In his hand he
had seen a sensitive flower unfold to its very heart
of flame.

“Never let her know,” he prayed, “never
let her know.”

CHAPTER VII

STRANGE WILD THINGS

“Phoebe,” said David Kildare as he seated
himself on the corner of the table just across from
where Phoebe sat in Major Buchanan’s chair writing
up her one o’clock notes, “what is there
about me that makes people think they must make me
judge of the criminal court of this county? Do
I look job-hungry so as to notice it?”

“No,” answered Phoebe as she folded her
last sheet and laid down her pencil, “that is
one thing no one can accuse you of, David. But
your work down there has brought its results.
They need you and are calling to you rather decisively
I think. Any more delegations to-day?”